


Daughter of Despair

by The Despaired Programmer (A_Dying_Wolf_Dying_With_Dignity)



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Gen, Homelessness, Pre-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Slight OOCness, Spoilers for Junko's past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4884868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Dying_Wolf_Dying_With_Dignity/pseuds/The%20Despaired%20Programmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief character study of a point in Junko Enoshima's childhood where she began to contemplate hope and despair for the first time, featuring her sister Mukuro while both were oblivious as to what this new development in Junko shall unfold for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughter of Despair

**Author's Note:**

> For my English class, our teacher assigned us to read a novel and choose an alternative style of a book report to write for that novel. I ended up choosing Dangan Ronpa: IF because it's a light novel ehehe... In the end, I decided to choose to describe Junko's childhood in a way that is supposed to hint at how she acts in the novel.
> 
> If any of you are wondering what possessed me to turn something like this in as a book report for school, look up "Fifty Alternatives to the Book Report" by Diana Mitchell and read the third option entitled "Create a childhood for a character".
> 
> If any of you are wondering about why Junko and her family are homeless, please refer to her wiki page.

            It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair at all.

            They did nothing wrong. Their parents did nothing to deserve this. Her sister did nothing to deserve this. _She_ did nothing to deserve this.

            What was wrong with the world? For what reason did the universe decide to put them in such a terrible predicament? Was this punishment for something? If so, then what were they being punished for?

            So many questions wracked the little girl's brain. She sat in the corner of the tent, curled up in a ball with only a thin tattered blanket shielding her from the cold outside. Her tunic was old and dirty and had small patches of different colored fabrics sewn over where there used to be holes, and her leggings were torn in places on the sides. The blanket was the only thing protecting her feet. Her face was smudged by dirt and cold sweat, having been unable to wash it for a long time. Her long, thick hair, a strawberry blonde paled from not being washed, was bunched up in a pair of loose pigtails which hung against her back, full of knots and split ends. She narrowed her dull blue eyes as she continued to think.

            Across from her sat her older twin sister. Though they shared the same face, everything else about the two was noticeably different. Her older twin sister had freckles across the bridge of her nose while her face was clear of them, though they shared the same amount of dirt and sweat. Instead of strawberry blonde hair, she had short, black messy hair cut into a shoulder-length bob. She also had dull blue eyes, but the shape was less rounded. Neither understood how they could be twins yet look so different. Their parents only explained that the older sister received their father's freckles and hair while they kept their mother's face and the younger sister had her hair.

            It had been two weeks since the family of four found themselves homeless, after their parents were laid off from work and could not keep up with handling the bills. They made due with whatever possessions they had left and relocated from their already small worn down apartment to the alley where they were shadowed. What horrible timing they had, for winter had arrived soon after, and their blankets were only enough to keep them alive.

            "Mom and Dad should be back with food from that charity kitchen soon," the older sister finally spoke up, breaking the silence and her younger sister out of her thoughts. "Are you hungry, Junko?"

            The blonde girl by the name of Junko looked up at her sister. The mention of food made her stomach growl softly. It was if her stomach was a small animal and if not fed soon, the animal would die. Her stomach was dying but her other organs and her brain were struggling to keep it alive.

            "I'm _starving_ , Mukuro," she muttered softly. "You are, too, and so are Mom and Dad."

            "We only need to wait for a little while longer, I'm sure of it. We just gotta hold on."

            That was what Mukuro always told her – to hold on, keep fighting, wait the troubles out because after all the negativity, something positive is bound to happen. It made sense. If they waited long enough, their parents would be back with food fresh and hot from the kitchen a few blocks away in to-go containers. Their body heat would increase the warmth inside the tent and they would be filled with good food. All Junko had to do was wait this out with her sister.

            Junko always thought about the balance between negatives and positives. For some people, negatives always came by, barely giving them a break. For others, people would be blessed with relief from their worries after suffering hardships. There were even people who rarely faced such problems and lived happier lives. She wondered where she and her family rested on that scale, both together and as individuals.

            Their parents were still looking for jobs and doing small odd jobs to save up money in hopes of turning their lives around. Together with her sister, Junko and Mukuro were still attending elementary school and were getting good grades in hopes of getting into good schools to set them up for the future. Mukuro, from what she heard whenever they shared stories about their days with each other after school, was hoping to become beyond exceptional in sports and other physical activities so she could become a soldier one day. As for herself, there was once a young lady who came up to her while she and Mukuro were walking "home" from school and gave her a business card, explaining she was an agent who could help Junko become a star in the fashion modeling world, and she hoped to work with "such a beautiful rarity" someday.

            What did all of those bits and pieces of their lives have in common?

            One word: hope.

            "Hope" was a strange word. It represented the feeling of trust and desire and expectation. Junko had mixed feelings about the word, had been ever since she and her family lost their home. No matter how much she prayed to the gods and wept from the cold nipping at her when the first couple days hit her hard, her hope did not save her. She had come to the conclusion that hope was not on her side a long time ago.

            "… Mukuro."

            "What is it, Junko?"

            The little girl lifted her head up to stare into her sister's eyes. Her lips were curled downward in a small frown.

            " _If we weren't born, do you think the world would've been better?_ "

            Her question brought a shocked look upon Mukuro's face, as she expected, but she did not care about that. She continued to speak.

            "Well, I don't know about your birth, because you're so amazing, but I know what I think about myself. This world would be better off without a mistake like me. I really can't deny this… _I regret the day I was born._ "

            Mukuro removed herself from the blanket she had and crawled over to Junko with it in her hands. She threw it over the both of them to cover their heads before she threw her arms around her sister, hugging her tightly.

            "If you weren't born, then I would be lonely right now," she whispered. "We're supposed to take on the world side by side, remember?"

            "Well, duh, right?" Junko reached up to wrap her arms around Mukuro and clutch at the back of her tunic with weak hands balled into fists. She rested her chin on her shoulder. "You can't reverse the past no matter how many times you try. I was born and there's no changing that, but because I was born with you… our family's faced nothing but… despair…"

            She pulled away from Mukuro, only to have her head now leaning against her chest. The opposite of hope is despair. Despair is the feeling of hopelessness, of exasperation, of giving up. Wherever there was the slightest sliver of hope for the Enoshima family, despair was there to take it all away. Hope and despair were trying to balance themselves out, but of course hope was not on their side.

            They lost nearly everything. They lost money, the privilege of having their own food, and they even lost their shabby apartment that at least shielded them from the cold better than this tent. Junko could only feel despair despite hers and her family's efforts to make things better again. As long as hope was against her, despair was more like her ally.

            It was kind of thrilling, really.

            If she did not have any hope, then all she had to do was turn despair into her source of joy and comfort. She had to turn the negatives into evoking a positive feeling. There was so much despair in this world that not even hope could turn around. She wondered how much of it she could absorb into her small, malnourished frame before she would explode and face the despair everyone felt before death. The thought was disturbingly intriguing her.

            "... –nko… Hey, Junko!"

            She found herself opening her eyes, though she was unsure neither of when she closed them nor of how long she had been in her sister's embrace. She looked up at Mukuro's similarly blue yet less rounded eyes and noticed that the blanket over their heads had fallen off.

            "Did you fall asleep on me?" she asked. "Anyways, Mom and Dad just got back and they're going to start a small fire outside the tent to keep us warm while we eat."

            "Oh, so they're back," Junko mumbled. She nodded. "What did they bring back?"

            "Some chili and dinner rolls, I think. They showed me some canned foods they were given, too; looked like peaches and corn on the labels." Mukuro stood up, wrapping her blanket back around herself. She helped Junko up as well. "Didn't you say you were starving?"

            Her eyes widened at the same time her stomach growled. "Y-Yeah, I'm really, really hungry, sis!"

            Mukuro chuckled softly as she led her to the entrance, which was zipped up halfway rather than all the way like it was before. Outside they could hear their parents speaking quietly to each other and the faint clicking of their father's lighter.

            The young girl ate silently with the rest of her family that night while she thought about her sudden realization upon despair. She could still feel it crawling up from behind and wrapping around her like her blanket, giving her a strange warmth that she found to be satisfying. Despair was her only friend outside of this family, but was the enemy to the majority of the human population. As long as she felt despair, despair was going to be there to keep her positive. She could use it to save this family. She could use it to save her sister and herself. It was not going to be their downfall, but rather their rise.

            Junko Enoshima had a lot of planning to do, unaware that several years beyond her, she, the future daughter of despair, would receive what she sought.


End file.
